you won't grow the economy if you raise tax rates on the top two rates. it will hurt small businesses, hurt our economy. >> so let's bring in the political panel on this topic for today. erin mcpike back with us and david goodfriend, democratic strategist and contributor. thank you for sticking around. let's bring in the element of tom cole, a republican of oklahoma. doesn't get more red than oklahoma. let's play what he said regarding support and passing the middle class tax cut. >> in my view, we all agree we won't raise taxes on people making less than $250,000. we should take them out of this discussion right now. >> what is the issue with that? >> well, what congressman cole has really shown is that there's an imminent amount of good logic and sense in preserving the current tax rates for 98% of americans for a lot of reasons. one of which is the gdp dependent on consumer spending. 0% of the economy is consumer spending. if you take $2,000 on average out of pockets of consumers, it's going to hurt the economy so right away you have a low tax good eco